Aardvark Daily

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Odds and (evil) Sods

I received quite a bit of feedback on Friday's column about AffiliateJunktion, with some readers contributing extra information.

One thing I overlooked in my calculations as to just how much money Mr Davies is making from this scam is the fact that affiliates are paying in US$ but all of the AffiliateJunktion (AJ) payments are being made in NZ dollars.

So the $75 "credit" that affiliates get after signing up to iPower's ultra-expensive hosting service is really only around US$58. Thus, Mr Davies is actually making a snot-load more out of this than first meets the eye.

It also seems that AJ has had a very convenient string of "server issues" and software problems that has seen affiliates losing commissions and payouts being significantly delayed.

What's more, the original promise that commissions would be put delivered by way of PayPal seems to have gone out the door.

For some strange reason, PayPal is apparently unable to provide this service so many folks are now waiting on cheques. (The cheque is in the mail?)

Further digging has revealed that Mr Davies (aka Matt Johnson, AKA ??) is a long-time player in the dubious affiliate scheme business. Other "appearances" of Mr Davies have been pointed out to me and I'm currently building a list of his previous "activities".

There are also two three camps of affiliates in the AJ army.

The first are those who have finally come to the realisation that it's just a variation on a pyramid scheme and that they're effectively being duped.

The second is a group who are still undecided. They've already built up a small amount of earnings from commissions and are hoping like hell they'll actually get paid.

And finally there are a few hard-core fanboys.

I can't help but get the sneaking suspicion that the very few who claim to be making good money and are being paid on time, every time are actually just more aliases for the man behind the scheme.

What better way to foster continued loyalty from affiliates who aren't getting paid or who are finding their commissions disappearing due to "technical issues" than to come in and keep the "get rich quick" dream alive through fake testimonials.

A search of the web will find quite a few blogs where the AJ scheme is discussed and fanboys come in to keep the dream alive.

While doing follow-up research over the weekend I posted a few heads-up to the comment sections of some of these blogs. Interestingly enough, quite a few of those comments have since been deleted by the blog operators. I wonder if AJ are even setting up their own fake blogs masquerading as happy affiliates?

Whatever the answer, this is a nasty messy business.

I'm sure there'll be more to come on the subject of AJ however.

Idiots in power

And now on a completely different subject...I couldn't believe my eyes when I read this story today.

Yes, those clever folks in the UK government have come up with a cunning way of stopping sexual predators from obtaining accounts on social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo.

How?

Simple, the email addresses of the offenders will be put on a black-list at those social networking sites so that the evil kiddy-fiddlers can't sign up.

Oh, the elegant simplicity of it all. With a plan that cunning, what could go wrong?

Yeah... I bet you spotted the obvious flaw in this plan.

But wait, you didn't think the bureaucrats were that stupid did you?

Of course not. They are threatening a five-year jail sentence for any offender who doesn't give police all their email addresses so that they can be added to that list.

So let's think about this. Someone who's going to break the law and risk a severe term of imprisonment by engaging in sexual predating on the Net will be scared off signing up for a freemail address by the threat of that lesser five-year sentence.

Yep, that'll work! (sigh!).

As usual, if you've got any comments to make on today's column, or if you've got more information that's relevant to the AffiliateJunktion operation, just go straight to the forums or use the contact form.

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